[Openstreetmap] London locations

[SteveC]

* @ 09/10/05 08:56:35 PM chebuctonian at gmail.com wrote:
> What's this about placeopedia? The source code is free, the data is
> syndicated and free. PoP was built explicitly for sharing, and what
> they are doing is not against the Google TOS.

They break the TOS all over the place.

The most obvious one they break:

'You may not... ...make derivative works of the imagery, in whole or in
part.'

Just because google put the stuff up doesn't make it some wonderful
panacea of freeness where we can do what we like with it. You'll see
they say: 'You may not delete or in any manner alter the copyright,
trademark, or other proprietary rights notices'. This means they don't
own all the rights to the data, and you have to respect that.

Placeopedia is (for the points entered using gmaps) a derived work, as
are pretty much every other thing that uses google maps for input of
data.


There *is* a flip side: it's unlikely google will call you in on the
miss-use, and it's unlikely their data providers will either any time
soon.

But don't be in any illusion how the data providers feel about all this,
they're not happy and they do take people down all the time. Ask The
Royal Mail's Revenue Protection Officer, or anyone at the OS. They and
others are losing business since people are using gmaps instead of
buying their data.

Again, don't believe me, go ask a copyright lawyer.

Ask them why freethepostcode.org doesn't use google maps for input of
postcode locations, or why openstreetmap doesn't use it for street
locations. Placeopedia is an almanac, not much different from either of
the above.

have fun,

SteveC steve at asklater.com http://www.asklater.com/steve/